that he was a member of the Collegio , the steering committee of the Senate. I do not know all of the twelve hundred or so noblemen of Venice, those eligible to sit in the Great Council, but I try to keep up with the inner circle, the sixty or seventy who actually run the Republic. He was new to me.
The woman wore a full-length gown of sky-blue silk brocade with a square-cut neck and slightly puffed shoulders. It was expensively embroidered with seed pearls, but the oyster cemetery around her neck would have bought a small galleon. She carried a fan of white osprey plumes.
When they had gone by, I shook my head.
Violetta is a whole constellation of different women as circumstances require, and then she was in her political persona, the one I call Aspasia. Aspasia knows everyone who matters, meaning any man with money or power. “ Sier Girolamo Sanudo. Recently elected to navy. A surprise.”
There are five ministers for navy in the Collegio. The post is regarded as training for youngsters on the way up, but Girolamo had looked unusually young for a senior post, probably not yet forty.
“Son of sier Zuanbattista Sanudo?” I said. “Ambassador to somewhere.”
Aspasia’s blue-gray eyes twinkled. “Well done! Except his daddy is back home now and was elected a ducal counselor last week.”
August and September are the peak of the political season in Venice, when the Great Council elects the Senators and the Council of Ten and other senior magistrates. That is why the nobility had all returned from their country estates on the mainland. In October they would go back again for the bird hunting.
“And the lady?” Aspasia asked.
“Respectable, not a courtesan. About thirty, natural blonde, blue eyes, comfortably rounded, real pearls, richly but discreetly dressed, good teeth, developing pout lines around her mouth. I didn’t notice her at all. His wife?”
“His mother, madonna Eva Morosini.”
“Truly? I know they say Venetian nobles are born old, but sier Girolamo must have taken that to extremes. Stepmother, I assume?”
Aspasia laughed. “A big step-he’s older than she is. She was Nicolo Morosini’s sister-came with a fat dowry and lots of political pull.”
“Dimples, too, back then. What is so special about the Sanudos, apart from the extreme age difference?” And the obvious fact that father and son together wielded much political heft.
She smiled with the innocence of a well-fed tiger. “Zuanbattista distinguished himself when he was in Constantinople; he won major concessions from the Sultan. He has climbed very fast up the political bell tower.”
As a ducal counselor, he was close to the top already. The doge is head of state, but we Venetians have always lived in fear of tyranny, so we keep him shackled with six counselors, one from each ward of the city. He cannot open his mail or meet with a foreigner except in their presence; he can do nothing without the approval of four of them. That meant that Counselor Zuanbattista Sanudo could block any government action he did not like with the support of only two others; for the next eight months he would be one of the most powerful men in the Republic.
“So when our present doge is called to a higher realm, the glamorous madonna Eva Morosini will become our dogaressa?
Violetta-Aspasia chuckled, “She dreams of it every night.”
“She would certainly brighten up the stodgy old palace. Exactly how do you know what she dreams of?”
Even my darling’s laugh is beautiful. “A friend told me.”
I saw that I had missed something subtle, but I did not press her on the matter, as I had other ideas more pressing. We had reached the watersteps where my gondola waited-not truly mine, of course, but a public boat rowed by my friend, Vettor Angeli, Giorgio’s eldest. He had agreed to transport me and my love to and from the theater that afternoon so I could play out my fantasy of being a rich noble. In return I had cast the horoscope of a girl he was thinking of marrying. It showed that she would be submissive, obedient, and faithful-not all qualities I would look for, but the news had pleased him, so we were both happy.
Violetta and I went back to her apartment and the rest of the day is irrelevant to my story.
Now you see why I did not notice the prologue. Think of it as the start of rehearsals for a play, or a bunch of friends planning a masque for Carnival, or even one of the scuole grande organizing a tableau for some great civic celebration. All of these begin with confusion as people mill around and someone hands out the scripts and assigns the roles. You over there-you can play the traitor; you’ll be the inquisitor. And for the murderer…
That was Sunday.
1
A ll week the Maestro indulged himself in alchemical experiments on the sublimation of sulfur, stinking up the entire Ca’ Barbolano and neglecting his correspondence. When his folly caught up with me, I had to spend all Saturday morning in the atelier, writing letters at his dictation, he at one side of the big double desk, me at the other. Progress was slow, because I kept correcting his Latin-he has a nasty tendency to confuse ablatives with datives and is too stubborn to admit it. Some of the letters would have to be enciphered, which would ruin my plans for the afternoon.
By noon he had questioned Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon in England on geography and philosophy respectively, advised Michael Maestlin in Tubingen on the Copernican system and Christoph Clau at Collegio Romano on astrology. Now he was in the process of reassuring Galileo Galilei that his usual room would be available the next time he came over from Padua. I was hungry for dinner; he rarely remembers to eat at all. Mercifully, we were interrupted by a thump of our door knocker.
He scowled so horribly that he actually showed his derelict teeth, which he does very rarely. “Did you forget to tell me of someone’s appointment?”
“No, master. Your next appointment is on Monday at-”
“Tell them I’m busy.”
“Who knows, it may be the doge,” I said flippantly, heading for the door.
It wasn’t, but not far off.
I went out into the salone, which runs the full length of the building and is furnished with huge mirrors, enormous paintings, gigantic statues, spreading chandeliers of Murano glass, and myriad other treasures, all of which belong to sier Alvise Barbolano. He lets the Maestro and his staff live on the top floor of his palace in return for the occasional horoscope, medical consultation, and financial clairvoyance. Visitors are frequently struck dumb by their first sight of such opulence. The moment I opened the door I saw that these callers would not be easily impressed.
The man was tall and gaunt, elderly but well preserved, with a face like the Dolomite Mountains that stand guard along our northern skyline-hard white stone above a spreading forest of silver-streaked beard. He wore the bonnet, long robes, and tippet of the nobility, but in his case they were cut from the rich scarlet brocade of a ducal counselor. To have such a man come calling was startling; to have him arrive without warning was epochal.
The woman beside him seemed more likely to be his granddaughter than daughter. Her face was plump and her dark silk gown well filled. Genuine blond hair is notable, but not truly rare in Venice. I knew who this couple was and so must you, if you were paying attention earlier. The surprising thing was not that I remembered his face from my childhood, because he must have marched in scores of feast-day processions, and the spectators vie to identify important magistrates; what was rare was that I knew his wife’s name at first glance.
Bad luck, the Maestro says, is misfortune; good luck may be treated as a reward for something.
I bowed very low and kissed the man’s sleeve. “Your Excellency is indeed welcome. Madonna Eva Morosini, you honor this house. The Maestro is expecting you and if you will-”
She gasped. “ Expecting us? Who told him we were coming?”
Zuanbattista raised one shaggy eyebrow two hairs higher on his forehead. The reason Venetian nobles are said to be born old is because they never drop their dignity. They speak in grave tones after due consideration. A ducal counselor, especially, stands at the heart of the labyrinth of interlocking committees that run the Republic,
